Do you remember the beryl icon and it’s menu? Here it is:

It wasn’t long ago that Linux users used a thing called beryl and compiz fusion hadn’t been heard of. Maybe you remember these days, maybe you don’t.

For those of you who did use beryl, I bet you miss that red jewel icon in your task bar that allowed you to do such easy tasks as change window managers and even access beryl’s options with just a right click. Well, now you can have these same options for compiz fusion with the Compiz Fusion Icon.

I find it a lot easier to get access to compiz’s settings manager when all I have to do is right click on a little icon instead of going through the menu bars. This is what the icon and options look like:

If you want to download it, it can sometimes be found in the repos, under the name ‘fusion-icon’ but if not, here’s a link to a .deb package.

Once downloaded and installed, you will find it in Applications -> System Tools

If you want to make the icon appear in the panel on startup, be sure to add it to your ‘Sessions.’ If you aren’t sure how to do this, I mentioned it in a recent post on Ubuntu Tweak.

For more information on the Compiz Fusion Icon, take a look at the Compiz Fusion wiki.

Are there some settings in Ubuntu you aren’t sure how to change? Is something still not exactly the way you want it?  If so, you should give Ubuntu Tweak a try.

Ubuntu Tweak allows you to change hidden system and desktop settings.  Ubuntu Tweak is ONLY available for the GNOME Desktop Environment (not Kubuntu, or Xubuntu, etc).  However, the author states that Ubuntu Tweak will run on other distributions. If you have any experience with this please post in the comments!

To download Ubuntu Tweak, visit their download page.  There you can either download the source files, the .deb package (easiest method) or download the package via the command line.  The download page provides more information on the different ways to download Ubuntu Tweak.

Once you download Ubuntu Tweak, you can run the application by clicking Applications->System Tools->Ubuntu Tweak or by typing ‘ubuntu-tweak‘ in the terminal.

When the program starts you should see the following Welcome screen:

The main screen gives you a little information about Ubuntu Tweak.  As you can see, along the left side are several subpages.

The first one we will look at is the ‘Computer’ page.  If you click on ‘Computer’ you should see System and User information like this:

This is very useful for troubleshooting if you need to know which kernel version you have.  This page also displays some information about your computer such as the processor type and amount of memory.

The next subpage is ‘Applications.’ When I tested this I was unable to get software to install or uninstall.  However, this page does give you a nice little description of each application.  So, if you see an application you want to try but can’t get it to install, take a look at my previous post on How to Install/Uninstall Software in Ubuntu. If you had luck installing or uninstalling software from this page, please post in the comments.

Next is the ‘Startup’ page.  Here you can edit settings such as whether or not to show the logout prompt, whether or not to show a splash screen, and what applications run on startup.  Here is a look at the settings for the startup applications:

Each program that has a checkmark next to it will run on startup.  You can stop it from running by unchecking the mark.  You could also remove it by clicking on the application name and then clicking the remove button.

However, if you wish to add an application, click the add button and then enter the name and terminal command.  This is useful for such programs as window managers.  These same settings can be accessed by clicking System->Preferences->Sessions.

The next setting is one that I usually have to lookup since it either requires a terminal command or using the Configuration Editor.  However, Ubuntu Tweak makes adding icons to your desktop a breeze.

To do so, click the ‘Desktop’ tab on the left and you will see the following screen:

Next is the ‘Personal’ tab.  This allows you to change such settings as where your default folders are located, document templates, scripts, and keyboard shortcuts.

Here is a picture of the default user folder settings:

If you change these settings to where your data is stored it will save you time when importing music, pictures, video etc.  So now, when you go to save a document it will go to where your documents are, instead of simply to your home folder.

Lastly, the ‘System’ tab has some very cool settings for both GNOME and Nautilus.  However, the settings I would like to talk about are the Power Manager settings.

Some of these settings are hidden by default in Ubuntu. The only way I know to edit these settings is by using Ubuntu Tweak.  Here you can enable hibernation, suspend (aka standby), and CPU scaling:

The CPU frequency control is a great setting especially for laptops since you probably don’t want your system running at full speed when on battery power.  If you want to prolong your battery life in Ubuntu try reading these posts on battery saving: CPU Scaling and Save Battery Life with PowerTOP

Of course these are not the only settings you can change. I went over the settings I felt were most important.

If you have a setting I didn’t cover, please post in the comments!

Facebook’s new privacy options are nice to see now that facebook is open to everyone. When I first joined facebook it had only just come available to high school students. I thought it wasn’t a bad idea at the time as I was only a college freshmen and I still had friends in high school. Now however, facebook is available to anyone with an email address. My friends are on facebook, my parents are on facebook, and even my grandparents are on facebook. As a college student this was a little concerning as I liked to keep at least some of my college experience away from my parents. Now, with the new privacy settings I can be ‘friends’ with my parents (keep them happy) and yet keep that photo album away from their eyes (you know the one I’m talking about). The new privacy settings give you a few options to not only choose who can see your profile but who can see a particular photo album. Allow only college friends to see college albums and family to see only family albums. You can exclude certain people from seeing certain things like that girl you like from seeing the photos of you throwing up all over your roommate after (let’s just say) a party.

There are a few rumors flying around that facebook will be introducing a new integrated instant messaging option. If this does turn out to be true, many people will find it even harder to get away from the social website, which is probably facebook’s goal anyway. I’d like to see the option but I don’t think it will replace the AIM or Yahoo! accounts I already have any time soon.

pictures are credited to http://www.facebook.com